


The Call of Duty

by Zauzat



Series: A Mighty Fine Man [5]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-15
Updated: 2013-04-15
Packaged: 2017-12-08 14:09:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/762210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zauzat/pseuds/Zauzat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Narada: McCoy receives his orders to report to the Enterprise with Kirk as his captain. He’s not impressed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Call of Duty

**Author's Note:**

> Betaed by the lovely imachar.

“What the fucking hell is this piece of crap?”

McCoy slammed his padd down on Pike’s desk. Pike’s eyes flicked across to his monitor where a message had just popped up from his executive assistant. _Sorry, couldn’t stop him._ He’d hoped to have warning before facing up to this inevitable confrontation but either way, it had to be done. Now was as good a time as any.

He glanced down at the padd, although he already knew what was on it. “It looks to me like your orders, Doctor.” 

“Yeah! It’s my fucking orders, alright. Orders to report as CMO of the Enterprise for a five fucking year tour. What the fuck?”

“You knew you were going to serve on the Enterprise as a doctor, the only surprise is your promotion,” replied Pike, keeping his voice steadily neutral. He knew it was a disingenuous answer but he also knew that his only way through this was to maintain total control at all times. 

“Serve on the Enterprise with _you_ as my captain, not some risk-addicted teenager straight out of the Academy! What the fuck is going on? How can you make _Jim Kirk_ captain of the flagship? How can you send me away for five fucking years? What the hell, Chris? Have y’all gone bat-shit crazy up there in the Admiralty?”

McCoy was pacing back and forth across the plush carpet of Pike’s new office. “This is all such fucking bullshit I don’t even know where to start. So, let’s start with this one. What the fucking fuck are you doing making Jim captain?”

“He’s shown what he’s capable of. Don’t you trust him? You smuggled him onto the Enterprise to start with!” Pike glared at McCoy as he said it. Despite all the good that had come from it, despite all the subsequent hurts that had overlaid it, he still felt betrayed that McCoy could have so cavalierly ignored orders on his very first - and as it turned out, last and only - time into deep space with Pike as his captain. 

“Yeah, I think he’s good enough. And I think it’ll fucking destroy him. It’s too much, too fast. He knows he’s good but he also knows he got fucking lucky and this is more than he deserves. Every other officer in Starfleet is going to resent him, every press leech in the Federation is going to hound him, any mistake he makes will sink his command. You’ve left him nowhere to go but down. Is that the fucking plan? Are you setting him up to fail?” 

“You might want to ease up on the conspiracy thinking, Leonard,” snapped Pike. “Starfleet is not setting Kirk up.”

“Like fuck you aren’t. Having mad Romulans emerge from future universes kinda ruins your trust in common sense. How the hell was the Narada not spotted entering the sector? There’s a conspiracy in here somewhere, it stinks to high hell!”

Pike’s gut tightened, of course Leonard would realise that things were being hidden. The man was no fool, nor was he one to take a hint to shut the hell up. Of all of this unbearable cock-up, being required to recite bare-faced lies to the man he was in love with, was one of things he resented most. “There are reasons for Jim’s promotion, Leonard, good reasons. Just leave it at that.”

“Leave it at that? Boot me out into the black to pick up the pieces as Jim falls apart, but that’s okay because y’all have got _good reasons_? Fuck that. What the fucking hell is going on? Tell me!”

“You don’t have the security clearance.”

“Oh yeah? Well, you can take your fucking security clearance and shove it where the sun don’t shine. If you don’t tell me what’s going on, what’s _really_ going on, I’m resigning, right here, right now. The Federation, Starfleet, the Enterprise, they can all fuck themselves. You may jerk off to your fucking duty but I don’t. I won’t be used as a patsy in destroying Jim.”

And there it was - the fundamental difference between them, the reason that this thing of theirs would never work in the long term. Pike’s first loyalty was to Starfleet. McCoy’s first loyalty was to his friends, friends that apparently didn’t include Chris any longer. Pike swallowed down the hurt and focused on keeping his voice even. For the plan to work, McCoy had to take his post on the Enterprise. Without that, every sacrifice Pike was making was rendered meaningless. But he knew McCoy well enough to know the man would not accept obfuscation. So one of his very first acts as an Admiral was going to be to break the Classified Secrets Act, just fucking great. 

“You can’t share this with anyone else.”

“I promise nothing, not ‘till I know what it is. After all this fucking time, either you trust me or you don’t.” McCoy was glaring at Pike, powerful arms crossed over his broad chest. 

Pike was reminded of the first time they’d met nearly two years ago, when McCoy had burst into his office to berate him over the injuries being caused by poor practices in the combat training sessions he oversaw. Then McCoy’s delight in challenging authority had taken them both somewhere totally unexpected. Now they were on a one-way trip to disaster, with Pike steering the shuttle. He wasn’t at all sure he could trust his volatile partner with this secret, but what else could he do? 

Pike looked out of the window, the elegant window with its beautiful views over the woodlands on the edge of the Starfleet HQ complex, the privileges of rank and power, the Admirals’ view that was supposed to be worth giving up his ship for. It wasn’t. 

“For a number of years it’s been rumored that there was a smuggling ring being run by some Starfleet captains but there was no hard evidence. Still, eventually the gossip got too hot to ignore and Starfleet Intel was assigned to look into it.”

“Starfleet Intel, there’s an oxymoron,” muttered McCoy. “Well? Get to the fucking point.” 

“They spent several years investigating and found nothing, nothing at all. Not a thing.”

“So? What the hell has this got to do with the Narada?”

“Think, Leonard.”

McCoy stared at him in annoyed puzzlement and then suddenly his face changed. “ _Oh!_ Oh shit. You mean--”

“Exactly. Elements in SF Intel were running the smuggling ring. They carefully investigated ships that had nothing to do with it, kept the smoke well away from themselves, and used it as a way to intimidate and silence anybody who had any suspicions. The ring wasn’t smaller than was rumored, it was much bigger. They were so busy with a crucial deal going down in the neutral zone with the Orions that they completely missed the information about the Narada that came in from our operatives. Two of their people were so horrified after the Battle of Vulcan that they gave themselves up. But they aren’t inner circle. We still don’t know who exactly is involved.”

Pike spread his hands out on his desk and stared down at them. Of everything that had happened, this left him speechless with anger. Paranoid maniacs from parallel universes were pretty much beyond anyone’s control. But that their own officers should have betrayed them, not from principle, but from petty greed, that was beyond his understanding. 

He continued grimly. “We can’t promote any of the Laurentian system captains because we have no idea which ones we can trust. And we can’t have any kind of public investigation because it’ll destroy Starfleet. After failing to protect Vulcan and nearly losing Earth, we can’t let this leak. We had to clean it up secretly while maintaining public morale. So Jim Kirk, hero of the moment, who we also trust not to have been involved, gets the Enterprise.”

He paused, and then looked McCoy dead in the eye. “And because the Admirals don’t trust a, what did you call him? A risk-addicted teenager with the flagship, he gets sent with the only adult supervision he’s guaranteed to cooperate with, which is you.”

“Me?” exclaimed McCoy. “ _I’m_ meant to play the responsible adult? With my record for insubordination?”

“I may have cleaned up your record a bit, with some help from the Surgeon-General. And sung your praises as a respectable, mature professional.”

McCoy glared at him. “You have to tell him. Jim, I mean. He’s gotta know what’s going down here.”

“I can’t. He doesn’t have the clear--”

“Fuck the clearance. You cannot send him blind into this mess which it turns out is one hundred fucking percent of Starfleet’s making. If you’re gonna use him as a distraction, he’s got to know what’s going on. Otherwise you’re just hanging him out to dry, and I won’t let it happen. You don’t tell him, I will, even if you fucking court martial me for breaking the Classified Secrets Act.”

Pike could see that McCoy was entirely serious. His frustration at the situation wasn’t helped by the fact that Admiral Victoria Turnbull had been yelling the very same thing at him less than twenty-four hours earlier. And when that woman yelled, you damn well listened. Privately he agreed with them both but he’d got nowhere in persuading his superiors. He feared this whole disaster was going to make Starfleet more addicted to secrecy, rather than less. 

“Fine,” he conceded at last. “I’ll tell him, next time I see him.” He simply couldn’t fight McCoy on too many fronts at the same time. He had one vital thing he needed to achieve in this meeting and he couldn’t let himself lose sight of that. 

“Fine,” snapped McCoy. “You do that. Now what about fucking us? I’ve barely seen you since you were pulled off the Enterprise. I wasn’t even allowed to visit you in hospital. And you didn’t exactly bother telling me you were out and back on duty. Why the fuck are you back on duty this quickly anyway? And don’t you care that I’ve been assigned a five-year deep space tour without you? Chris, what the hell is going on?” 

Pike wondered how to steer his way through the maze of half-truths he would need to tell McCoy. Yet again he wished the man wasn’t so damned stubborn and would take a hint about shutting the hell up and just accepting his orders. He was tired of justifying his return to work. In between yelling at him about Jim, Victoria had been yelling at him about being back on duty. Even Phil Boyce was unhappy about it, but none of them damn well understood. 

What could be done immediately, had been done. Now all they could do was wait and watch, wait for the healing to finish, wait for the unanticipated side-effects to show up, wait for the long-term damage to become clear. The last thing Pike wanted was to be waiting alone in his apartment with nothing to do. At least now he was working on something that might make a difference.

“We always knew our orders might separate us. Six billion Vulcans are dead, Leonard. Scores of instructors, hundreds of cadets. _Us_ has to take a back seat to the greater need.” 

“You’re chucking us in the trashcan for the _greater good_?” demanded McCoy incredulously. “Or are you just fucking punishing yourself for failing to save Vulcan and save our ships?” 

Pike looked away. McCoy had always been able to cut to the quick of any argument. Being articulate and intelligent was part of what had made the man so attractive to him, and part of what made it so hard to put anything past him now. 

“I have a duty, and I will execute it. Who do you think has been assigned to lead the internal investigation into the smuggling ring?”

“They’re gonna make you grass on your fellow captains?”

Pike bit down on his angry reply. Trust Leonard to punch right through to the heart of it. It was an awful assignment and one that if handled badly would likely ruin his career in the Admiralty before it had even started and earn him lifelong enemies. But what could he do? Someone had to lead the cleanup. You couldn’t avoid duty just because it didn’t suit you. 

“I’m trusted to be clean because of my four years Earth-side and for obvious reasons I have better contacts among the captains than more senior Admirals do.”

“Right, so they’re dumping the crappiest job on the new boy, no surprises there, but why am I being sent away? Boyce was supposed to be Enterprise CMO. Let him go and hold Jim’s hand.”

“I’ve told you, they-- we don’t want Jim up there without you. He’s going to need all the support he can get,” said Pike. “And Boyce is needed here on Earth. He’s done a lot of work with Vulcans over the years, they want him here to support the survivors.” 

He didn’t mention Boyce’s other assignment, the unenviable job of playing mental nursemaid to the potentially unstable Admiral. Of course officially he was supervising Pike’s physical recovery, no resource was spared in supporting a man they called a hero, but deep down Pike knew the truth. And he knew Boyce knew it. 

Two rounds of mind control by alien races had got him grounded for four years while the Admiralty watched him for signs of breakdown. Very few careers survived a third round. They’d get all the blood they could out of him, giving him the awful job of the cleanup of the smuggling circle, knowing that duty and guilt would never allow him to refuse, and all through it they’d watch with eagle eyes for the slightest sign of mental breakdown, any excuse to shuffle him sideways and then pension him off.

He knew what this game looked like. He’d watched it play out with his father as the hapless pawn. Although he’d never hated his father more than he did right now, he also felt an aching sympathy for him, because in the end it turned out the old man had been right. Space was indeed the source of unimaginable horrors. Pike had survived with his life by doing his best to play his enemy while he played for time and he’d survived with his sanity by believing fiercely that his crew would do their best - although it’d been a shock when it had been cocky Jim Kirk of all people who came to his rescue. As a result, he still had a career with Starfleet - or so they said. 

But when it came to learning to live with it all, with the events and with the never-ending consequences, he was just as alone as his father had always promised. For the first time in his life he could imagine what it had felt like for Josh Pike to come home to the love of his wife and the hero-worship of his son and know that neither they nor anyone else would ever be able to reach through to the heart of his hurt and his fear. He was and ever would be trapped alone with himself. 

And he wasn’t the same, he knew it, he could feel it. Where a few weeks before he’d known with enviable certainty the limits of his physical strength and his mental endurance and had known the signs that allowed him to push forward or required that he pull back and rest, now all that certainty had been stripped away. He was trapped in the ruins of his body, with legs that didn’t work properly and hands that shook with strain. But far worse, he was afraid that he was trapped in the ruins of his mind, plagued by bewildering swings of mood, strange headaches that shifted unpredictably and problems with concentration that made him feel as if he was peering at the world through thick fog. 

Boyce told him it would get better but he couldn’t offer a reason, or a time line, or a guarantee. Medical professionals had always made Pike nervous, some of what they could do seemed close to magic and at other times all they could do was shrug and talk endlessly round the one thing they never admitted. _We just don’t know._

When it came to the long term effects of the slug on his body and on his brain, the brutal truth was that no one knew. He was imprisoned by his own symptoms as surely as he’d been imprisoned by Nero, and the uncertainty about his future was nearly as agonizing now as it had been then. 

“Chris?” McCoy’s voice, soft with concern, pulled him out of his morbid thoughts. McCoy’s anger seemed to have dissipated and he simply looked tired now, watching Pike with worried eyes. Pike tried to steel himself against the sadness on McCoy’s face, this was much harder to deal with than the other man’s anger. But he had to stay strong, he had to do what needed to be done. 

“Why are you doing this? We’re in this together. Aren’t we?” 

The uncertain waver in McCoy’s voice almost broke his heart. He should just say it straight out but he couldn’t bring himself to be quite that cruel. Or maybe he couldn’t bring himself to give up on them just yet. He’d been briefed about the internal disaster with Starfleet Intel before they’d even pulled him off the Enterprise and he’d known almost immediately what he would have to do. He’d had weeks to think about it as he recovered in hospital while the Enterprise was limping home through deep space. 

“Leonard,” he said gently. “If this had just been an accident that lost me the Enterprise, I’d be moving heaven and earth to get you posted here with me on Earth. But it’s not--”

Even as he tried to go on to the obligations of duty, he knew he’d made a mistake. McCoy’s beautiful hazel eyes had lit up with sudden hope.

“Okay, so I’ll go and hold Jim’s hand in space and you can work through your issues by cleaning up Starfleet’s shit, but we’ll still be us, right? Five years isn’t great but we can make it work, can’t we?”

Pike’s heart sank as he replied in his most neutral voice, “No, we can’t.”

“But why not?” McCoy was almost pleading now. “Chris, you’re the lo-- uh-- the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I’ll do anything for you, even live in a tin can in deep space for five fucking years without you, if you think that’s what needs to happen. Why are you trying to shut me out like this?” 

Pike leaned his elbows on his desk and buried his face in his hands. “Because I am--” He stopped. Damn, it was hard to remember that it was all over. He would never be able to call himself a captain again. “I was a deep space captain for well over a decade and served out there for over two. I know how long distance relationships go and the brutal truth is that they don’t! I’ve watched my crews wilt as they wait for the comms that never come, or they get the Dear John letter, or they finally find out that everyone else on board knows their partner back home has someone on the side. And I’ve received the letters from back home, from partners who’ve heard rumors or who never get comms any more, writing to the ship’s captain in a desperate search for reassurance.”

“For fuck sake, Chris, that’s not who I am. I’d never do that to you.” 

“Nobody sets out meaning to do it,” Pike retorted, “but it happens. Over and over and over again.” 

He didn’t mention that he knew all too well how many tempting opportunities there were for attractive senior crew, especially ones on the flagship. He’d taken plenty of advantage of such things in his time. He didn’t say that Leonard was younger than him, and able-bodied, and recently promoted and damned easy on the eye and would have his pick of both crew and off-worlders if he wanted them. Everyone gave in eventually.

“It won’t happen with me,” protested McCoy.

“Really? Because your marriage was hardly proof of that.”

McCoy could not have looked more shocked if Pike had actually slapped him. “You fucking bastard. You’ve no right--”

And suddenly Pike couldn’t take it any longer. He’d played out this argument in his head a hundred times already. He just wanted it to be finally, definitively over. “I’ve every fucking right! I’m the bastard who got tortured on the Narada, who lost the use of my legs, who lost my command. I’m the bastard who has to live with all the consequences, now, tomorrow, forever after. I can’t do it, Leonard. I can’t cope with all these changes, and do my duty to Starfleet, and be worrying about when you’ll finally meet someone else out there and if I’ll be the last to know.”

“No.” He put up a hand to stop McCoy’s protest. “If that makes me weak, or pathetic, or whatever the fuck else, then that’s what I am. There is only so much I can manage. I’ve too much to deal with already and in the end I have to deal with it myself. Love can’t cure everything, Leonard. It can’t cure any of these fucking things. It’s all just shit and we have to endure. I have to endure.” 

McCoy was watching him with his forehead crinkled with concern. “Dammit, Chris, this is just how you feel now. You’re not thinking straight, you’re still traumatized, this is not time to be taking important decisions. We can talk about it later. It’ll get better.”

He could feel the sudden surge of rage welling up in his throat, as unstoppable as a magma flow about to break through the crust. “For fuck’s sake, join the queue, why don’t you? Get in line to tell me how I’m not doing my recovery right, how I’m not dealing with grief right, how I can’t manage my own trauma, how it’d all be just fine if only I’d do whatever _you_ think is best. Because you all know so fucking well what it’s like to be me, you’re all such fucking experts - all you doctors - except you aren’t, because you can’t tell me a fucking thing that’s of any use. Like if I’ll get my legs back or how long it’ll take for the headaches to go away. But oh yeah, it’ll get better. Because it always gets better. Except when it fucking doesn’t.”

Panting with anger, he spun the chair to turn his back to McCoy, knowing that on his computer sat the fucking file that proved that very thing. You could have positive attitude up the wazoo and it still didn’t mean it would get better. Among the many pieces of intelligence briefing that were coming flooding across his desk as the effects of the loss of Vulcan made their way across the Federation, was the news of the upsurge in support for Terra Prime. 

Until only a few months ago, it had been nothing but the shabby remnant of a movement that had its moment in the sun nearly a century ago. But now that time-traveling aliens from alternate universes were able to attack the Federation planets with unimaginably superior weaponry and pulverize entire planets in just a few minutes, support for Terra Prime had surged exponentially. Trisha Paxton, great-granddaughter of their most famous leader, John Frederick Paxton, was the pretty, articulate face that led the movement, dusting off all the old war cries: for a new era, for a human-centric consciousness, for an end to alien interference. Terra Prime, Earth First... forever. 

And now they’d found themselves an even more potent spokesman, someone who’d fought alien races, who’d been captured by them, who truly knew the horror and had come to see through the lies imposed on them by the monstrous ruling cabal that was apparently made up of the Federation’s inner government and Starfleet black ops. They’d found a willing voice in Rear Admiral Joshua Pike (retired). 

However disturbingly sane the man might sound on the news vids, Pike knew that the creeping madness that had ended his father’s career had never _gotten better_ , it had just slowly spread, insidiously poisoning everything it touched, until it brought him to this point, where he could stand up and openly defy everything he’d once sworn to protect. It left Pike sick to his stomach, and it left him profoundly frightened. No one could promise him that it would get better, and only he could walk the unknown path that lay darkly before him. 

A hand rested gently on his shoulder.

“Don’t!” Pike snapped. “Don’t touch me. It won’t get fucking better and we won’t talk about it later.” He spun round to face McCoy again. At least he could say this like a man. 

“This is it. It’s over.” He watched as McCoy sunk in on himself, his face a picture of misery. Pike pulled out every inch of the iron self control he’d cultivated over the decades, wrapped himself in the cold cloak of duty that he knew McCoy hated and waited out the man he’d never be able to think of as his partner again. Without flinching, he watched as the last signs of hope drained from McCoy’s expressive face and those beautiful eyes went dead. 

“Well-- that’s that then.” Pike could hear the waver in McCoy’s voice, could hear the edge of tears as the other man cleared his throat. Every instinct screamed at him to stop this, to reach out and offer comfort.

He had a sudden memory of waking up in the middle of the night with McCoy spooned close behind him, an arm wrapped tightly around his torso as if he was a giant teddybear. Generally they’d slept apart. When his legs had still been under his control, Chris had liked to sprawl out and Leonard had tended to toss and kick. Still they’d always fallen asleep with a hand or foot touching the other and sometimes Leonard would cling to him in the middle of the night. On those occasions Pike had normally eased onto his back so he could pull Leonard into his arms. He’d come to suspect that it had something to do with Leonard’s fear of losing those he loved. A fear that Pike had just proved to be all too true. 

Right now he wanted nothing more than to hug McCoy close and bury his aching head against the broad chest of his lover - but this had to be ended. He had to be strong. He wrapped his hands around the bars of his chair until his knuckles bleached white and he waited. 

“I guess I never meant that much to you, after all.” McCoy picked up his padd off the desk and walked out, closing the door behind him with exaggerated care, the soft click as intense an accusation as a slam would have been. 

Pike watched the door for a long moment and then pulled open the top drawer on the right-hand side of his desk. Out of it he took a small box, covered in plush blue faux-velvet. 

He held it in the palm of his hand for a long time before finally opening it to look at the two rings it contained, nestled in white silk. Two plain gold bands, men's rings, identical except that the one was a little larger than the other. He picked up the larger one and turned it slowly in his fingers, round and round and round.

It was all rather old-fashioned but both he and McCoy had always liked tradition. It was one of the many things they’d had in common. He'd been going to ask McCoy directly after the man graduated. It had been a practical plan, their relationship on the Enterprise would have been easier with the formality of a marriage contract between them. But it had been driven by his heart. Finally he'd thought that he had it all: a career he was proud of, a partner he was crazy about, a chance to put it all together. The stars had moved into perfect alignment.

And then the universe had shifted and the future he'd planned with such care and pride had been obliterated in the time it took a Romulan madman to say his name. 

He allowed himself five long minutes to look down at the two rings and mourn what might have been, to grieve for a life that would now never happen. At last he wiped his eyes dry, closed the box, put it right at the back of the lowest of his drawers and turned to the work on his desk. When all else was lost, duty remained. When all others had left, there was still work to be done.

Whatever happened, there would always be work to be done. 

THE END -


End file.
